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The Wing Institute provides funding for graduate students who are interested in doing research in the area of evidence-based education.
The purpose of the initiative is to:
- promote new research in areas of evidence-based education,
- promote new research across disciplines,
- encourage graduate students to focus their future professional work in this subject area
- disseminate research findings for application in "real world" settings, further bridging the gap between research and practice.
Name: Kristy Lee Park
Research Proposal: The outcome of this research is to decrease problem behaviors and increase appropriate behaviors in the classroom in order to increase overall academic and behavior success. Secondly, the study wishes to answer the question of the efficacy the FBA process as an intervention in early childhood.
Hypothesis or Questions
- Can typical function-based assessments (FBA) procedures (descriptive indirect and direct methods) produce verifiable hypotheses of function when performed with pre-school children in a Head Start program?
- Is there a functional relationship between type of intervention procedures (function-based and non-function-based) and observed change in problem behavior?
View Results
An Experimental Analysis of the Treatment Validity of the
Social Skills Deficit Model for At-Risk Adolescents
Ramón B. Barreras, PhD, BCBA, NCSP
University of California, Riverside
The primary purpose of the present is study is to evaluate the treatment validity of the social skill-deficit model for the development and implementation of Social Skills Training (SST) for adolescents who are at-risk for developing emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD). The hypothesis is that the social skill-deficit model will lead to improved social skills and decreases in competing problem behaviors that will be maintained long after the intervention has been terminated. In addition, such findings will further enhance and contribute to the extant literature regarding the most effective methodology to assess and deliver SST.
Specifically, the type of social skill deficit the adolescents demonstrated was identified through teacher rating scales, direct observations, and functional behavioral assessment (FBA). Teachers completed the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) for each student, and based on their ratings a hypothesis was developed regarding the type of skill deficit the student demonstrated (i.e., performance or acquisition). This hypothesis was further tested and validated through an FBA of the student’s target behavioral deficits. Based on the comprehensive behavioral assessment, participants were matched to a particular SST program based on their respective acquisition or performance deficits. In order to establish the treatment validity of the social skill deficit model, all students were first exposed to a non-skill deficit based SST program that is not based on the type of social skill deficit the students have.
Research Questions
The following are the research questions that guided the study:
- Is a non-skill deficit based social skills training package an effective intervention for adolescent students at-risk for EBD?
- Is social skills training more effective when matched to the type of social skill deficit (e.g., acquisition versus performance deficit) than a non-skill deficit based social skills training package?
- Are the hypotheses regarding students’ social skills deficits (acquisition and performance), as determined by the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), confirmed through a functional behavioral assessment?
- Does social skills training based on the social-skill deficit model lead to generalized and maintained performance for students?
The overall goal of this study was to determine if the use of the Social Skills-Deficit model in the remediation of social skills problems with at-risk adolescents would lead to better intervention outcomes beyond those obtained from a non-deficit based SST program. An additional goal was to determine the implementation utility of the Social Skills-Deficit model by everyday school personnel. Lastly, the inclusion of simple and effective progress monitoring, treatment integrity checks, and social validation procedures were used in the evaluation of treatment outcomes.
Conclusions
When considering the possible efficacy of a deficit-based model to SST, precise assessment and skill matching should not be the only variables considered when developing SST for at-risk adolescents. Rather, the type of instructional training delivered during SST should match the type of social skill deficit should be considered.
Specifically, promoting social skill acquisition requires the systematic use of social modeling, coaching, behavioral rehearsal, and social problem solving (Elliott & Gresham, 1991). In contrast, enhancing social skill performance requires the systematic use of prompting and cuing, peer-initiated and group-oriented strategies, behavioral contracting, and differential reinforcement (Elliott & Gresham, 1991).
The present findings will enhance the literature in that an analysis of the efficacy and effectiveness of a deficit-based SST program for at-risk adolescents has not yet been addressed in the literature (Cook, Gresham, Kern, Barreras, Thornton, & Crews, 2008; Gresham, 1998). Specifically, the current study significantly contributed to the extant literature in a number of ways. First, to date, no studies have experimentally manipulated the treatment validity of the skill-deficit model as a means of empirically linking assessment to intervention (Barreras, 2008).
Second, this study focused on urban adolescents at-risk for EBD, which is a vastly under-researched population in the EBD field when it comes to SST research. Specifically, as previously discussed, the majority of SST research has been conducted with younger elementary-aged populations at-risk for EBD. In addition, in a recent abstract literature search on PsychInfo, no published SST studies were found that targeted urban adolescents at-risk for EBD.
Third, this research evaluated the impact of SST when implemented by everyday school personnel. This is noteworthy considering that one of the primary weaknesses of the SST literature is the lack of effectiveness research that has evaluated the effects of SST with minimal participation by researchers (Gresham, Cook, Crews, & Kern, 2004).
Fourth, no research has examined the use of functional assessment technology to concurrently determine the type of skill deficit a student possesses, and inform the development of SST strategies (Barreras, 2008). Lastly, this investigation attempted to fill the gap in the SST literature indicating poor generalization and maintenance of positive student outcomes produced by SST programs. Results demonstrated that the majority of the students generalized the skills they learned during SST and maintained those gains after the SST program is terminated.
Overall, the present study contributed to the literature by examining a number of limitations that researchers have reported regarding the efficacy and effectiveness of SST for students with or at-risk for EBD (Mathur, Kavale, Quinn, Forness, & Rutherford, 1998; Quinn et al., 1999).
View Research Summary
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